General Lord Dannatt on the Korean War

>> Andrew Roberts: General Lord Dannett was Chief of the General Staff, that is, head of the British army between 2006 and 2009. Richard, you've written a book with historian Robert Lyman entitled, Korea War Without End, who Started the Korean War and why?

>> Richard Dannatt: Well, the Korean War, Rob, and I would argue, was not, as some people think, the first action of the Cold War.

 

We actually would rather argue that it was probably the last action of the Second World War. And the origin lies in what turns out to be an undocumented conversation between President Roosevelt and, as you recall, he died shortly before the end of the Second World War. And Joe Stalin when Roosevelt, on behalf of the Americans, asked the Soviets to assist with the invasion of Japan.

 

Now, that, of course, didn't actually happen because the atomic weapons were used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And as we know, in August 1945, the Second World War concluded as far as the major actions are concerned. But some this led Stalin to think about creating some form of buffer between the Soviet Union and what was clearly a burgeoning influence by the West, particularly the Japanese presence.

 

Wrong, sorry, the American presence in Japan and then the American presence increasingly in Korea, as the Japanese withdrew from Korea. The Japanese having occupied the Korean peninsula for many years, and of course, having been defeated in the end of the Second World War, they were forced to withdraw from Korea.

 

And what developed during the period of 1945 to early 1950, was effectively the two Koreas emerging. North Korea, which looked, with encouragement from Stalin, towards the Soviet Union, not so much China at this stage, and South Korea, which was looking much more towards Tokyo. MacArthur and the American influence, with some encouragement from Stalin, the North Koreans thought there was an opportunity to unite the Korean peninsula under themselves, as I say, with some support from the Soviet Union.

 

And they launched a surprise attack in early 1950.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, 25 June 1950, this massive north Korean attack, led by Kim Il Sung, supported by Stalin. And it did very well initially, didn't it?

>> Richard Dannatt: Well, it did. The South Korean army was poorly equipped and poorly led, and the South Korean regime was pretty, let's call it, corrupt.

 

I mean, it was not a strong regime at all. And the American presence, although there was an American presence in South Korea, was not strong at all. So the North Koreans launching their surprise attack, had considerable success, pushed South into the Korean peninsula and were threatening really as far as the South.

 

And this caused the Americans to react. Now, the problem that the Americans had under MacArthur five years since the end of the Second World War, without being unduly critical of the Americans. The American military in Japan had become pretty untrained, pretty unbattle worthy, pretty unready. MacArthur was operating rather like some kind of supremo dictating affairs in Japan.

 

So when this attack occurred from 25 June, so rapidly, and the Americans felt that they ought to counterattack, as it were. The units that they rushed in to the South Korean peninsula were again, I'm very poorly led, poorly trained, poorly prepared, and frankly, the North Koreans continued to prevail.

 

And that might well have been the case, except, as history relates, General MacArthur very boldly decided to launch a counter maneuver and landed quite a strong force at Inchon on the coast, behind effectively the North Korean lines.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes.

>> Richard Dannatt: Had a major discombobulating effect on the North Koreans.

 

 

>> Andrew Roberts: It happens in mid September, and you call it in this book a masterstroke, because it changes the nature of the war at the time.

>> Richard Dannatt: Yes, I mean, MacArthur had a great reputation around him, and this was indeed a masterstroke. It was bold, it was adventurous, but it was successful.

 

And it had the effect of changing the course of the war at that stage and caused the North Koreans very much to check and, and to pause.

>> Andrew Roberts: You mentioned about how America was unprepared. It only had ten divisions at the time. It seems extraordinary, but was that because the military doctrine of the United States by 1950 was the assumption that wars of the future were going to be fought by long range bombers and possibly nuclear bombs, and therefore you didn't need boots on the ground?

 

 

>> Richard Dannatt: Well, that's exactly right. I think the effect of the two atomic bombs in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, very much changed people's thinking. We must also remember that the United States Air Forces have built up a huge capability which they deployed against Germany and then to an extent against Japan in the latter years of the Second World War.

 

And although their land forces had significantly been run down, their air forces were still pretty potent. So I think the military thinking was that weapons like atomic weapons, long range bombing, would be the sort of chosen ways of policing the world in the years to come. So when they suddenly found that they had an aggressive land opponent, they realized that they had to counter that with their own land forces.

 

Which, as you say in quantum terms right across the total holding of the United States army was only 10 divisions. And those that were in the far east, in Japan, were frankly unprepared, untrained, poorly equipped, and were thrown in pell mell into the battle. I think credit to them, as often we find with the Americans in combat, they adapted and stood up to the plates pretty quickly and began to restore the situation.

 

Which caused MacArthur then to start to think about what he was going to do next. This is where the story is in two parts.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, absolutely. We'll come on to that in a minute. These were the days when the United nations was very effective, wasn't it? I mean, it wasn't just the Americans and the South Koreans by any means.

 

It was a truly sort of global initiative to make it not stand, this unprovoked invasion of a neighbor was not going to be allowed to stand by the United Nations, was it? Who else was involved?

>> Richard Dannatt: No, indeed, I think from really the founding of the United Nations.

 

Shortly after the end of the Second World War, the preservation of sovereign territory of member states was very significant. So when North Korea mounted this unwarranted illegal attack on South Korea, the United nations passed various Security Council resolutions. And yes, it was principally the Americans who responded, but other contingents increasingly came into the war.

 

And as we know later in the war south significant British and then Commonwealth forces were involved. So there was a very determined political, diplomatic response by the United nations, which progressively and increasingly was backed up by military contributions to assist the Americans. But in the main, this war was, for its duration, from 1950 to 1953, was America with support to other United nations allies.

 

But America in the main, fighting the North Koreans. And as we'll discuss later, of course, the Chinese, were significant players later on.

>> Andrew Roberts: We will indeed. Douglas MacArthur is a key figure in all of this. His personality, obviously, is enormous, not least because of his exploits in the Second World War, but.

 

But he was reckless, and in mid October 1950, he makes a key mistake, tell us about that.

>> Richard Dannatt: Well, I think the key mistake that he made, and this, of course, is enjoying the luxury of hindsight. Is that having reversed the situation by his master stroke at Inchon, hadn't thought through what his military strategic objective was within the grand strategic objective that the United nations would or the Americans might have formulated.

 

So as that gap in thinking existed, he decided to exploit the reversal of fortunes that he had inflicted on the North Koreans by starting to press north up the Cranian peninsula. And he did so pressing towards the 38th parallel, and-

>> Andrew Roberts: You just explain to the listeners what the importance of the 38th parallel.

 

 

>> Richard Dannatt: The 38th parallel it's a line on a map, if you like. But it was pretty much the line that at the start of all this was the demarcation between North Korea run by the North Koreans and South Korea run by the South Koreans. And of course, as we know today, that is pretty much still the demarcation line between North Korea and South Korea, the 38th parallel.

 

That's the significance of it. And this is where MacArthur's activities become very controversial and ultimately led to him being sacked. Now, if the American and United nations intervention had merely restored the status quo of the land previously controlled by South Korea up to about the 38th parallel. Then it may well have been that the war could have stopped there as a hot war, and negotiations could have begun at that stage.

 

But this is where MacArthur, who was a very powerful individual, and when President Truman wanted to meet him, MacArthur wasn't summoned to Washington. They met in a third party location, and frankly, MacArthur, the great tribune, the great czar, really, effectively browbeat Truman into persuading him. Or at least allowing him to have much more flexibility over the conduct of the future campaign than, frankly, he should have done.

 

And this begs the whole issue about political control over the armed forces in democracies. And this, I think, was really a failing. The net result of that was encouraged by the success that the American and United nations military were making on two axes, moving from south to north, two lines of advance, if you like, moving from south to north up the Korean Peninsula.

 

MacArthur decided that he wanted to go as far as the Yalu river, effectively the boundary between Korea proper, which of course is North Korea. But the whole of the Korean peninsula, with effectively China and to an extent, Russia in the northern part of that. And it was that decision to push on up in winter in very harsh conditions, which effectively began what we would call was the second Korean War.

 

The first Korean War could have stopped when the United nations forces under MacArthur had restored the situation back to the 38th parallel, but he decided to push on. Now, there was a lot of discussion also about the use of bombing, the extent to which North Korea would be bombed, indeed, mainland China would be bombed, but in a sense, that came later.

 

 

>> Andrew Roberts: There's also, isn't there, some controversy about the extent to which Douglas MacArthur genuinely thought that he could use nuclear bombs in this war?

>> Richard Dannatt: Well, indeed, this, of course, nuclear bombs or atomic bombs, or let's say, the weapons that had developed from the two atomic bombs that were used in 1945.

 

Some people's thinking at the time was that, well, this was the weaponry that had ended the Second World War. This was perhaps the future of warfare, and that their use should not be considered, or their use could be considered legitimate and useful. And that particular debate lingered for quite some time.

 

But the practical effect that the United Nations, United States pressing up to the Yalu river, the effect that that had was to provoke a massive reaction from the Chinese army.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, because Mao Zedong had only come to power the previous year, in 1949, and already he was seeing essentially this buffer state disappear before his very eyes.

 

So he had to, or felt he had to act, and he acted extraordinarily powerfully, didn't he, across the Yanu River?

>> Richard Dannatt: He did but you go back to my earlier point that that did not need to happen. If the restoration situation had just been as far as the 38th parallel, that probably would have prevented.

 

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Shouldn't MacArthur have taken this into account? That of course, China was going to react as strongly as it did. Isn't this part of the recklessness and the mistake, essentially, that MacArthur made.

>> Richard Dannatt: Just so, and this, of course, is the frailty of human nature. If you like someone who had been very successful, regarded himself as very powerful.

 

It was his judgment that he could restore the whole of the Korean peninsula under a South Korean regime and did not believe that the Chinese, or indeed the Russians. And of course, he was right largely about the Russians, but he did not believe that the Chinese would get involved in the way that they did.

 

And, of course, that was a huge miscalculation and ultimately led to Truman removing him. And the great hero MacArthur being sacked. And of course, once the Chinese People's Liberation army had got involved in huge numbers, then the American advance, which had been successful up to that point. But bear in mind it wasn't particularly strong with units that weren't particularly effective, once faced by mass Chinese and still North Korean troops as well.

 

Then, counterattacking, mounting a major counteroffensive that began then to roll the United Nations forces back to around about the 38th parallel with a huge loss of life on both sides.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, well, exactly. We'll come on to the loss of life, but tell us about in particular the Battle of Injin river where the British lost over a thousand casualties.

 

 

>> Richard Dannatt: Well, this is a classic event during the war. We are talking pretty much about trying to stabilize Broad Deer Line around about the 38th parallel. In fact, only the other day I was talking to a veteran who had been back to the Imjin quite recently and was astounded to find that the South Korean troops are still occupying positions broadly in that area where he was back between 1950 and 1953.

 

The point being is that this Imjin river battle was one of those absolutely critical ones where the United nations force said, we will not go any further back. And the fighting was extraordinarily bloody. It was ferocious, it was heroic. And indeed, of course, the unit that is famous in this is the Gloucesters, who had a high casualty rate and a very large proportion of the battalion, including the commanding officer, were taken prisoner.

 

And of course, this whole prisoner business is one of the complications that compounded the difficulties of the negotiations. Once the active phases of fighting had died away, once the flow, the ebb and flow up and down the Korean peninsula had stopped around about the 38th parallel, then the fighting continued.

 

It was very vicious. The North Koreans and the Chinese had no real appetite early on to negotiate. And one of the sticking points was the very large number of prisoners that were in the hands of the south and the United nations and the large number of prisoners that were in the hands of the south and the Chinese.

 

And that became a major discussion point later on.

>> Andrew Roberts: You were six months old at the time this war broke out. You must have met several veterans of it. And the Gloucesters, who you mentioned, nicknamed the Glorious Gloucesters because of this, wasn't it? Must have a few, have you met any veterans in the course of the research and writing of this book?

 

 

>> Richard Dannatt: We spoken with a number, and I think here's an interesting point. The British government was reluctant to recall to the colors too many World War II reservists, former soldiers who still had an active liability. And what we see is large number of the troops. The British troops that were deployed were national servicemen who were called up under the national service arrangements.

 

And when you meet some of those former national servicemen who fought in Korea, they are very proud of the fact they fought for British interests, but under the United Nations flag and under the United Nations banner.

>> Andrew Roberts: Why didn't they want veterans of the Second World War? You'd have thought that they'd automatically have got the more experienced troops rather than the completely raw, inexperienced green ones.

 

 

>> Richard Dannatt: Yes, I mean, I make a point. I describe that to make a point, really. Obviously, there were some who were recalled, but there was quite a reluctance and I think you can understand it. I mean, if you had been someone who was conscripted sometime between 1939 and 1945 and had fought maybe through Europe, maybe through the jungles of BURMA up to 1945.

 

Frankly, they felt they'd done their bit and that they had got back into civilian lives. They were trying to rebuild their lives. They did not want to go back into uniform and start to fight another war. So around the regular army cadre, if you like, of professional soldiers, the government's decision having decided to reintroduce national service.

 

And this, of course, is a very interesting discussion point in its own right. Many people think national service has been a long time facet of British military life. Well, it hasn't, it only existed from 1949 to 1963. And it did so because in that period, sort of ten years after the Second World War, we had huge imperial possessions, huge colonies, independence movements to deal with.

 

And frankly, we needed more military. And again, it's the same reluctance not to want to recall former World War II soldiers. But a preference was made to enlist the new generations, if you like, put them through training with the regular army cadre and use them for both campaigns like Korea.

 

And then quite quickly, you see, of course, we're into the Malayan emergency, which had also begun at around about that time on the Malaysian principle.

>> Andrew Roberts: You mentioned earlier about how large numbers of people died in this war. 37,000 US troops killed, 415,000 South Koreans. The North Koreans lost 2 million casualties, which is about 16.5% of their population, and the Chinese, 1 million or so.

 

And yet the war never ended. Why not?

>> Richard Dannatt: Well, I'll just pick up on those numbers that you've quoted. If you look at those numbers as proportions of their population, it actually makes this Korean War, a bloodier, more costly war than many facets of the Second World War itself.

 

Quite extraordinary, 2 million are on the sort of Chinese, North Korean side. That is a huge number. But your question is why it continued for such a long length of time. I think it was an unwillingness on both sides to accept that the peninsula of Korea would not be unified by one side or the other, and that it was going to have to be effectively divided.

 

And, of course, and this is why the title of this book is not by chance, Korea War Without End, the war finished, as in terms of being a hot, fighting, shooting war in 1953, but it didn't finish with a cease. Well, it finished with a ceasefire, but it didn't finish with a peace plan.

 

It didn't finish with a plan that everybody had signed up to and would be the blueprint for successful future. There's a parallel in my own experience. The Bosnian war came to an end in December 1995 with the Dayton Peace Agreement, which the Dayton Peace Agreement was actually quite a good ceasefire agreement, but as a blueprint for the future of Bosnia, it was terrible.

 

And Bosnia remains the poorest country in Europe as a result of that better part of 30 years on. And that's the same sort of situation that we see in Korea, a war that stopped but was never satisfactorily concluded, and here's the rub. And that's why we thought this book was an interesting one to write at this time, not just to mark the 75th anniversary of June this year, the outbreak of the Korean War, but let's just look at the situation in Ukraine, look at the look at the world.

 

 

>> Andrew Roberts: We're gonna come to that. There's a very big aspect of this, the rest of the interview virtually on Ukraine. You say that the Korean War has much to teach us, quote, not merely as historical and practitioners of war, but about its evolution in the modern world and in particular its utility as a tool of international politics.

 

It demonstrates the utility of effective tools of collective defence, tell us more about that. And maybe this is the time to talk about Ukraine, which of course, did not have a collective defence, or at least not a treaty of collective defence.

>> Richard Dannatt: Yeah, well, there's a number of issues that are raised there as far as collective defense is concerned.

 

I think it's fair to say that when the North Koreans attacked, it caught everyone by surprise. And initially it was the Americans in support of the South Koreans. But then very quickly, as we've already discussed, the United nations passed various Security Council resolutions and the war became much more internationalized and therefore on the side of the south.

 

It was a collective defense, or collective offense, if you like. It was a multinational international effort to endeavor to deliver on the will of the United Nations Security Council. And in that way, it's a precursor of the Cold War. If we look at what settled down across Europe, the Iron Curtain, which separated NATO and the Western European countries, the United States from Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

 

Both in a sense, instruments of collective defense, which we sort of saw its first outing, if you like, as a response to the North Korean and then the Chinese attack on the North Korean peninsula. But then there is another issue which is instructive but a little misleading at times.

 

As far as the Korean War is concerned. Some military historians say, well, the Korean War is very interesting cuz it's a classic example of a limited war. Well, it's limited up to an extent that actually, if you go back to those huge number of casualties and figures, not very limited when you're talking about millions of people having lost their lives.

 

Limited by the fact that it was geographically limited, limited by the fact that nuclear weapons which could have been used were not used. And in the end, limited by the military strategic objective, namely to restore the 38th parallel, which was the objective. So in some ways it has the characteristics of being a limited war.

 

But then you sort of widen the conversation and then discuss what is the utility of the military instrument in international relations. And of course, we can then come on to other wars of discretion that we have been involved in. One's thinking, not so much the Falklands, because I think from the UK point of view, our sovereign territory had been violated, so that comes into a category of its own.

 

But we are talking about Iraq and Afghanistan, two wars in Iraq, discretionary wars. I think another classic example is our intervention in Kosovo. And whether there is a moral obligation to use military force to right or wrong, if you like, which of course is the moral obligation, is best buttressed when it has international law behind it.

 

An international law behind it is when the UN Security Council has passed resolutions. Interesting, I don't wanna divert down here. When Tony Blair took British forces and others into Kosovo in 1999, it didn't actually have the force of a specific UN Security Council resolution. He felt that it was morally the right thing to do.

 

And that's actually been a moot point ever since. A moot point that was built on as part of the decision to go into Iraq again in 2003. But I think we digress.

>> Andrew Roberts: The result, you described the Korean War as the result of miscalculation of cause and effect and of unintended consequences.

 

This obviously has immediate present day connotations, doesn't it, with regard to Putin in Ukraine?

>> Richard Dannatt: Yes, I mean, if we reel back to where we were in February 2022, Putin, I think many would agree, was victim to two elements of his own hubris. One, that his security services had sufficiently destabilized Zelenskyy's government and that quite a proportion of Ukrainian people were more Kremlin minded or Russian leaning than it turned out to be.

 

And the second thing was, having spent quite a lot of time, effort and money re-equipping and retraining his armed forces. He felt that that unstable regime could be given a shove by his armed forces and that in a matter of days and weeks, a few months at the most, the Ukrainian regime would collapse.

 

And he would achieve his strategic objective of effectively rubbing out Ukraine as a sovereign state and reincorporating it back into his vision of a greater Russia. Well, as we know, his security forces had not destabilized the Kyiv regime to the extent that he had hoped his military. Frankly, their performance in February, March 2022 was woeful.

 

Military analysts would say that they made virtually every mistake in the book and a few more that hadn't been thought of before. And they were then countered by the Ukrainians showing an extraordinary spirit, rapidly supported by other countries of which the United Kingdom was pretty much in the van as far as that's concerned.

 

Which caused in part the Russian forces to be pushed back and the situation to be stabilized and well, it's kind of developed from there. I mean, we can go into this as much as you want to go into it.

>> Andrew Roberts: No, no, no, absolutely. Our listeners are always interested in Ukraine.

 

The North Korean troops who are in Ukraine and the Kurs salient today is an interesting connection, of course, between the two wars, how do you feel they're doing? We hear extraordinary stories of sort of fanatical devotion, but at the same time them not being very good soldiers.

>> Richard Dannatt: Well, they're completely on untried, the North Koreans themselves would say that they were reasonably trained.

 

The extent to which they were equipped for what they were doing, I think is another open question. But the reality is that the 11 to 12,000 strong contingent that North Korea made available to Russia has done very poorly, has taken a huge number of casualties, around about 3,000, 4,000 casualties.

 

My latest understanding is that most of those units have been withdrawn from the front line at the present moment for retraining and sorting themselves out. Now you have to wonder how this has come about. Again, my understanding is it wasn't so much the Russians asking the North Koreans for numeric assistance.

 

Actually it was the North Koreans wanting to show that they were good allies and partners of the Russians and also to an extent, to give part of their military experience. Because the opportunity of bloodying your soldiers, if you like, building up a bank of experience will prove useful at some point in the future.

 

Put in the context of the operations that they've been involved in in Kursk, I think this was actually quite an innovative idea of the Ukrainians who were struggling to make progress on the front line in Ukraine proper. And decided to, if you like, conduct a mini inch on by outflanking, if you like, by going into a softer part, by pushing into Kursk territory.

 

And then conducting really quite a successful aggressive defence, which has caused a huge number of casualties by the Russians. And of course, if negotiations do start at some point in the future, it is quite a significant bargaining chip that part of Russian territory is in Ukrainian hands, notwithstanding the fact that 20% of Ukrainian territory is in Russian hands.

 

 

>> Andrew Roberts: The hubris you mentioned with regard to Putin was also, of course, very much evident in Washington in the Korean War. What you call hubris and miscalculation in Washington, partly, obviously, Truman going along with Douglas MacArthur's plans. Are you concerned about hubris and miscalculation in today's Washington?

>> Richard Dannatt: Well, it's a very good question, cuz today's Washington is today, what tomorrow's Washington is going to be like, good news knows, only Trump knows.

 

I mean, I think if we just reflect on what's been said and done over the last two or three days as regard Gaza and the Palestinians and converting Gaza into some kind of Riviera, this takes quite a lot of getting your head around. Not surprisingly, most neighbors in the region, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia are completely saying no way.

 

And I think most sensible analysts also are struggling with this. A hubris is really dangerous. It can take you to believe things, it can take you to do things. In Trump's case, it can take you to say things that you can't substantiate and are indeed potentially very dangerous and destabilizing in their own right.

 

Now, of course, if I was trying to be at all generous to Trump, he might have 25 ideas, which 23 might be bad and two might be right.

>> Andrew Roberts: That was said of Churchill, wasn't it, by Alan Brooke. And the job was to make sure that you got the two correct ones and then things weren't turned out well.

 

 

>> Richard Dannatt: And of course, Trump is the arch disrupter. We don't know what he's gonna do. Putin doesn't know what he's gonna do. President Xi doesn't know what he's gonna do.

>> Andrew Roberts: The difference might be though, mightn't it, that in this analogy that, that you have between Korea and Ukraine was that North Korea actually suffered a net loss of territory in the end, but Russia doesn't look as though it's going to.

 

If there was a peace treaty along, not necessarily a peace treaty with armistice along the present day front lines, then Ukraine would wind up losing 20 plus percent of its original territory. That is different, isn't it? You say in your book the Korean War was not a triumph of containment, it was the opposite.

 

Tell us more about that.

>> Richard Dannatt: Well, I think it's what it means. And of course, in the context of Ukraine, it has to be remembered, and this is not a very popular thought. That in 1990, 1991, as the Cold War came to a conclusion, or should I say how Europe was being viewed after the Cold War.

 

There was an active debate about whether the Donbas provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk, who were predominantly Russian speaking, would actually be part of Ukraine or would be part of Russia. And it was decided that they would be part of Ukraine. And it's that part of eastern Ukraine that is now that 20% predominantly under the hands of the Russians.

 

So you could argue, and I don't want unduly antagonistic or controversial about this, that had a different decision been made in 1991. And those Eastern provinces, it had been decided would be Russian rather than Ukrainian, we might not be in the position that we are today. So when Putin declared Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia to be forever Russia 18 months ago, he could say that he was merely asserting what he thought was probably always right.

 

So you-

>> Andrew Roberts: Hang on, you don't think that those territories which he's essentially annexed, if he had got those however many years ago, it was that he would just think of a new excuse to destabilize the Ukrainian state after 30 years of independent existence?

>> Richard Dannatt: Well, knowing what we now know, of the way that Putin has developed, I think he probably would have still gone down the track it is gone down.

 

Now, whether he would have pressed further into Ukraine first, or whether he would have pressed elsewhere, bear in mind, Putin over the last 5, 10, 15 years has been pressing in a variety of directions. And when the west in 2013 decided not to engage in Syria after the use of chemical weapons in Damascus, he saw an opportunity and Russian troops saw an opportunity to gain significant influence in Syria.

 

So Putin has been pressing, we know that he's pressed in hybrid sort of way, manners of warfare in the Baltic states and elsewhere. So the behavior that we've seen in Ukraine, I think would always have happened, we saw examples of it elsewhere. But I think slightly more useful is we have to say, well, this is where we are today, what is going to happen?

 

And this, I think, is where the parallels going back to Korea become instructive. I can't see logically any circumstances in which Russian forces under Putin would voluntarily withdraw from Eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainians even supported by even further firepower and know how from the West, I can't see them now being strong enough to kick the Russians out.

 

So therefore, de facto, and if there is a ceasefire, it's going to be along the current line of engagement. And that has parallels with the 38th parallel situation. It then begs what happens thereafter. And this again is where the parallels become quite interesting. Korea, War Without End, 1953-2025.

 

The situation strategically and diplomatically has not changed. Tell me the construct, if the fighting stops, let's say, the 1st of September 2025, along the current line of engagement in Ukraine, what is gonna be the diplomatic structure after that? It's very, very difficult to see it.

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, it could be like Korea, where you just have a demilitarized zone right the way for sort of a thousand miles across southeastern Europe, which is protected by five soldiers on each side, but isn't crossed.

 

And it goes on for years and years, decades and decades, as you've mentioned, over 70 years.

>> Richard Dannatt: Indeed, you have to say is a pretty appalling prospect, but it's in some ways it's the most logical and likely one. It begs a further interest. Is that line of confrontation just manned by Russian and Ukrainian soldiers one side or the other, or is there some form of demilitarized zone in which international troops stand between them?

 

And if that is to be the case, where are those international troops going to come from? Would Putin ever accept American, British, French, German troops so close to the Russian border? Maybe another solution is they come from non aligned countries like India and Pakistan and South Africa and South American countries.

 

You have to ask the question and there are no easy answers there.

>> Andrew Roberts: No, and would Trump even want American troops to protect that border?

>> Richard Dannatt: Well, if you take his campaigning lines that he wants to be a president that ends wars rather than starts them, he probably wouldn't want to put his troops in harm's way like that.

 

He also said clearly has failed. He wants to end the Ukraine war in a day. Well, now he's talking about doing it in 100 days. Well, we'd all love on the basis of stopping huge killing, just think. And it's just worth pausing for a moment. Last year in 2024, the Russian casualties killed and wounded equated to seven times the size of the British army today, just in 2024.

 

Now that is a huge loss of life, killed and wounded, and it kind of puts it in perspective. And if it was to be suggested that international forces would man a demilitarized zone across that thousand kilometer and Britain was going to take part and say control 100, 150 kilometers.

 

That in my judgment it would take 5 to 10,000 troops to do that, we haven't got them. We having reduced our own military considerably. Getting rather like back to the early part of our conversation, in 1950, United States army only had ten divisions. Well, we're in the same kind of peace dividend situation, where we've reduced our spending on military capability.

 

And if you suddenly want to do something of a significant numerical nature, we haven't got them.

>> Andrew Roberts: And we haven't got any plans to bump up our spending on defense even up to 2.5%, which a lot of people think isn't enough anyway until 2030, it's a long way off, isn't it?

 

 

>> Richard Dannatt: You're right. And of course, people slightly rolled their eyes a week or two ago when Donald Trump said, well, we should go to 5%. Well, actually that wasn't a figure plucked out of the air. If you go back to the last decade of the Cold War, we were all spending between 4 and 5% of GDP on defense.

 

And the funny old thing is the Cold War never went hot because we were buying ourselves a sufficient deterrent military capability to prevent that Cold War going hot. It's because we've taken ourselves right down risk of lengthening this. I would try and be brief. There are parallels with the 1930s.

 

In 1935 we were spending the UK less than 3% of GDP on defence. We failed to either appease or deter Hitler. When war broke out in 1939, that shot up to 19%. And in 1940 when we were fighting for our very existence, it was 46%. That's the disastrous cost of fighting a war.

 

How much better to spend between 3 and 5% now to buy ourselves the military capability to deter further military adventures from Vladimir Putin?

>> Andrew Roberts: You have to be right and that's absolutely correct. And your well researched and well written and thought provoking book is a reminder of that great truth.

 

Now tell me, what history book or biography are you reading at the moment, Richard?

>> Richard Dannatt: I'm reading because it sat in my bookcase for a while. My great friend, late friend, Richard Holmes book on Marlborough published in 2008 and I've always had a more than a schoolboy understanding of the brilliance of Marlborough.

 

When you rang for the police in London, it was Whitehall 12. When you say what was the Duke of Marlborough's number? It was Brom 4689. We knew those were the dates of the Battle of Blenheim Ramilly's Oudenarde Malplaque. Because I think Marlborough by any analysis has been Britain's greatest soldier.

 

I think Wellington would admit that. Montgomery might have struggled to admit that. But actually I think look at Marlborough's career as a soldier and as a canny statesman and politician. Richard Holmes, very well written, well researched account is making a fascinating read and I'm sorry that I didn't read it before, but I've been thoroughly enjoying reading it now.

 

 

>> Andrew Roberts: It's a superb book. And also of course Winston Churchill's book on Marlborough is beautifully written and some wonderful sonorous sentences.

>> Richard Dannatt: You could say he was slightly biased because he was a member of his.

>> Andrew Roberts: He was indeed-

>> Richard Dannatt: Holmes, he could be rather more independent, I think.

 

 

>> Andrew Roberts: He could be but he loved Marlborough just as much, didn't he, as Churchill? It's a great book. What about your what if?

>> Richard Dannatt: My what if is what if on 6th of May 1682, when James, Duke of York was embarked in the Gloucester on his way to Edinburgh to collect his pregnant wife, Mary of Modena, to bring her back to the court, because it had been decided that he would follow his brother Charles as king.

 

What if James had died in that shipwreck when the ship hit the sandbank 30 miles off the Norfolk coast? I suggest the course of British history would have changed. But, and here's the rub, also saved was John Churchill. If John Churchill, later the Duke of Marlborough, had perished at the same time, maybe the course of European history would have changed.

 

No Berlin, Reminis, Oudenade and Malplaque. No Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, no end to the War of Spanish Succession. Maybe greater French dominance in Europe. But what if James had died and John Churchill had died, I can term British history would have taken a different course and the European history the same.

 

 

>> Andrew Roberts: We also don't necessarily have the fall of the Stuarts, therefore the rise of the Hanoverians, the Whigs. You don't have the Great and glorious revolution of 1688-89, which probably means you don't have the American Revolution of 1776, which was entirely based on it. There you go.

>> Richard Dannatt: So actually, when the doster hit that sandbank, it started a great train of what if events.

 

And the great joy is that the wreck of the Gloucester has been discovered, we are working on it. I chair the Gloucester 1682 Trust. We're going to put a museum in Great Yarmouth to tell the story of a Gloucester for the subsequent generations.

>> Andrew Roberts: Magnificent, and it also ties in, obviously, with the glorious Gloucesters and their fight on the Imogen River.

 

Lord Dannett, Richard Dannett, former head of the British army, thank you very much indeed for appearing on Secrets of Statecraft.

>> Richard Dannatt: Thanks, Andrew.

>> Presenter: This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we generate and promote ideas advancing freedom. For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts or view our video content, please visit hoover.org.